The thing I most enjoy about the interior makeover business is taking a sow's ear and turning it into a silk purse. And when I can accomplish that mission in the condominium apartment belonging to one of my very best friends, and work with my talented friend, interior designer Margaret Mohr, then it is also fun - as well as satisfying!

This makeover project was published in American Homestyle Weekend Decorator. The combination living/dining room is both traditional and up-to-the-minute, using Laura Ashley fabrics on the slipcovered seating, throw pillows, dining chair skirts and valance window treatment, and filling in with Laura Ashley accessories - like the candlestick lamps, needlepoint pillow and pleated lampshades.

When my friend Lynn moved into this two-bedroom condo, she had a bookcase (which we built in to the right side of the patio door), a beautiful antique dining table and chairs and an antique china cabinet with which to begin the decorating process. She had jettisoned most of her other upholstered furnishings, and thus was starting with a nearly clean furniture slate.

We went shopping together, and at at a neighborhood antiques shop found a pair of comfortable English armchairs trimmed with beautiful bouillon fringe. Next, we found a tuxedo style sofa from a trendy resale shop, for $150 - perfect pieces for a magazine slipcover makeover project!

"One tip when buying 'gently used' furniture is to replace the worn cushions' 'insides,' as that is what usually sags and is uncomfortable to sit on," Margaret explains. "Here, the loose seat back and seat cushions on the sofa were replaced with new, thicker, dacron-wrapped foam core cushions and the large armchair seat cushions were replaced with new, down-wrapped foam core cushions," she notes.

Next began the fabric selection process. Lynn, who loves red and wanted an environment conducive to entertaining friends, gravitated towards the colors you see here - soft greens and reds, with check and floral fabric accents. A tiny blue check was selected for the lamp shades and to trim the window valance.

"The warm reds are perfect compliments to the verdant treetop views that Lynn enjoys," Margaret says, "so Joetta and I fine-tuned the selections with Lynn to create a fabric grouping that was not 'matchy-matchy' but rather blended, as if pieces were slipcovered at different points in time."

Slipcovers were designed to not "look" like slipcovers. Velcro, that handy hook-and- loop fastening system, was a way to accomplish this look, achieving a snug fit that appears to be upholstered, rather than slipcovered.

Lynn first carefully removed the bouillon fringe from the armchairs, had it hand dry-cleaned. Then the seamstress sewed it by hand onto the bottom of the new slipcover skirts.

For the turn-of-the-century Renaissance Revival host and hostess dining chairs, we had whimsical pleated skirts made. They now reside in the living room as convenient pull up seating. Even the upholstered fabric back panels are attached with Velcro to the chairs' wood backs.

The round, skirted table is a sturdy plywood "X" base, with a custom-cut, 36-inch circle of plywood on top. One tip is to pad the plywood top by draping it with an old mattress pad, so it looks soft and less hard-edged, before draping it with the lined and interlined skirt - important to give the fabric a luxurious hand.

In this case, the skirt puddles a good ten inches onto the floor for a sumptuously full look, and the generously scaled, lined square topper in a complimentary Laura Ashley print is edged in both eyelash fringe trim and gimp braid. It's a good idea to select the largest-diameter wood circle that your room will accommodate - the 20-inch rounds that are sold with attached bases in discount stores just look skimpy - and aren't large enough to put a lamp and a teacup on at the same time!

Another custom decorating idea is to paint a design onto a rug. This custom sisal rug, made to fit the long, narrow living and dining room's dimensions, was edged in neutral twill tape.

Margaret Mohr designed a dramatic large-scale diagonal pattern in a leaf green paint, with pale yellow painted fleur de lis patterns punctu-ating the thin-lined crosshatch intersections. The design mimics the elegant look of men's suiting fabric, popular in the l930's. To paint the rug, Margaret and I first snapped chalk lines to mark off the entire design, then placed masking tape along each side of the lines. Using a stiff stencil brush and Plaid Enterprises Dry Brush stencil paint, we painted between the taped-off diagonal lines of the pattern. Using an X-acto knife, Margaret cut a custom stencil for the fleur de lis designs, and we stenciled them on last, using a neutral, yellow-tan color.

Since we knew Lynn loves dress-maker detailing, we used a variety of different gimp braids, eyelash fringes and rope fringes to dress pillows and table skirts, selecting all the trims at Leggett's Fabrics.

For a textural coffee table, we found an antique English wicker trunk (and the green tole tray on top of it) at another antiques shop and had a sturdy wooden base and inner frame made for the trunk. The wicker echoes the texture of the sisal rug, warming the room and taking the edge off its formality.

The window treatment was adapted from a treatment in The White House, minus side panels. The valance gives the bare expanse of sliding glass doors some character - and disguises the unattractive metal door track. The window needed the fabric's softness, but because the bookcase comes to the edge of the window on the right side, and the window dead-ends into the wall on the left, architecture really dictated the valance design. It was deliberately designed to hang at the ceiling line, covering the blank furdown wall above the window, but not the window itself, as we wanted as much light to enter the room as possible from the covered porch beyond.

Another decorating idea is that everything does not have to match perfectly. "Lynn had a large collection of blue and white porcelain and pottery," Margaret explains. "While there is just a touch of blue in one of the checked fabric patterns, the collection looks perfect in the room, adding warmth as only a collection can. It even spills over into the kitchen, visible through the pass-through behind the dining table," she says.

We chose an intricate, colorful cathedral window quilt, from one of many made by Lynn's mother, to hang as a dramatic piece of artwork for the entry hall. The colors echo, but don't exactly match, those in the adjoining living spaces.

Says Lynn of the finished room: "One of the things I like most aboutthe space is that the minute the project was finished, I felt like I'd lived here for years."

Joetta Moulden's work as a stylist has been celebrated in the pages of Country Home, This Old House, Better Homes & Gardens, Good Housekeeping, Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion and a variety of other shelter magazines and books. Visit her web site at www.shelterstyle.com or email her at info@shelterstyle.com.

Trade Secrets

• Don't be afraid to mix tone-on-tone stripes, like the red sofa fabric, with florals, checks, leaf patterns and small diagonal diamond fabrics.
  
  
• Do use the dining table as a library/sofa table right behind a sofa in a small space. For a dinner party, the table pulls away from the sofa, and the armchairs from the living room and the other dining chairs are moved around it.
  
  
• Display your collections - use plate stands or hanging plate holders to display pretty plates and platters. Group like things together to increase their impact. No one, including you the homeowner, can enjoy such treasures if they are stored behind closed cabinet doors.
  
  
• Do use antique accessories to soften and add charm to a room - like beautiful old books, a cut-glass goblet used to hold flowers, and an antique silver dish - all add beautiful texture to the wicker trunk table.
  
  
• Soften the starkness of host and hostess dining chairs (and sidechairs, too) by adding whimsical pleated skirts - then pull them into the living room for extra seating.
  
  
• Use large-scale accessories, especially in a small space. Here, oversized, framed antique engravings, a huge wooden birdcage and a large, fanciful iron candle sconce punctuate the long living room wall. The birdcage keeps the rather diminutive china cabinet from looking so short!